D&D Encounters - Season 2

[I'm A Banana]

Halflings in Dark Sun are crazy wild cannibals. Everyone is FINE with that and love it. Elves are shady desert runners. EVERY race in Dark Sun is turned on it's head and violates the regular notions of what defines the race.
...
Things are different on Athas. Goliaths are different here.

So we agree.

That's one of the designers big points: familiar races aren't what you'd expect. Everything gets twisted by the Dark Sun filter. That's what I meant by "ignore the man behind the curtain." Oh, these are goliaths, wink wink, nudge, nudge. Only they're not really goliaths. Just like you'd have to wink at the halflings and the elves, hiding the man behind the curtain. They're not really the same thing at all, despite the common name. They're really (functionally) something totally different.

Scribble said that it was only a case of filing off the serial numbers, and I was pointing out that the two are, in reality, quite distinct. As distinct as Athasian halflings are from the Hobbit, really.

Mostly I just wanted to find out what kind of critter they put the name "tiefling" on, since the original race's extraplanar "ancient kingdom" flavor seemed, to me, to be wildly out of place in Athas's setting. The Encounters had a pregen tiefling, so I was hoping someone with access to the materials could tell us a bit about how the Athasian filter warped them, since that might give observers a hint as to how they've integrated some of the planar-themed material from the core.

 

[Saracenus]

I coordinate 6 tables (hopefully we will be running a 7th and 8th table after the store we play at expands space). Our first 4 already ran to much accolades and two more are ramping up for Monday.

I can't not emphasize the utility of the D&D Community Group Forums for D&D Encounters. Also check out Teos' blog for more cool stuff for Dark Sun

There is a lot of teeth gnashing on the difficulty of the first encounter (it was written too tough, that is why we have DMs to modulate the rough spots) but if you can get past that there are a ton of resources to make your DDE Dark Sun game full of win.

My two ceramic coins,

 

[Scribble]

Scribble said that it was only a case of filing off the serial numbers, and I was pointing out that the two are, in reality, quite distinct. As distinct as Athasian halflings are from the Hobbit, really.

That's not what I was saying actually (or at least that's not what I was trying to say.)

I'm saying they aren't just using the stats and saying now they are a new race that is actually half-giant, and wanting us to just ignore the fact that they use Goliath stats.

They're actually Goliaths,but they're modifying the story of Goliaths to be more in line with Athas (just like elves and halflings.)

So instead of just calling Coke Pepsi, they're actually just modifying a few of the ingrediants and calling the result Pepsi (as opposed to starting from scrathc.)

I think it's a really good idea if only for the fact that it teaches new DMs that they can just modify stuff they already have to fit whatever vision they have for their own worlds.

 

[DarthMouth]

I think it's a really good idea if only for the fact that it teaches new DMs that they can just modify stuff they already have to fit whatever vision they have for their own worlds.

Yep.. and thats is really nice.


I'm expecting Tieflings to be the legacy of one of those long dead sorcerer-kings.. A lasting gift to his people. Fit nice. Dont think ill be any outsider involved.

 

[wedgeski]

Oh, and I hope everyone else had a good time, too. (But really, there's no way that anyone else had as much fun as we did.)

A really wonderful post, thanks for sharing.